26 - 30 June 2022 - Biograd

The little town of Biograd is delightful, with a mixture of old winding streets and small quays, mainly for fishing boats. The marina, in contrast, is modern and almost flashy. Most of the cars parked on the quays are from Slovenia, Hungary, Germany and Austria; a smaller number from Croatia. There are a mixture of boat types, and now that the chartered sailing boats have gone out, the slight majority left are small motor cruisers.

There are several hotels and many apartment blocks available for holiday rental. Although it’s the last week of June, there are already many families with children heading for the beaches during the morning.

The supermarket is very close to the marina, but we haven’t been in there all week. We’ve acquired our supplies from the small fruit and veg market and the bakeries. The local produce is of excellent quality and with very few food miles.

Our focus has been on packing up the boat to leave her for seven or eight weeks. This is at a slow pace, with the less attractive jobs, like cleaning the oven, being done in the early morning, when it is a little cooler. By lunchtime it has been a blistering 36C in the shade. The boat heats up inside and the AC is struggling to make even a small reduction in the temperature. In the late afternoon / early evening we could venture out again and attend to jobs on the deck. Marko, who will look after the boat while we are away, has been with some of his team to look at the main things that need attention. There are always several things. I recently read a caption definition of a boat: a hole in the water into which lots of money is poured. However the boat is getting smaller and we love her.

Mid week at midday, Marko came and invited us to join him to eat some spit-roasted kid. He buys the animal from a local farmer, straight after slaughter. It is spit roasted straight away, without seeing the inside of a fridge and he brings it to treat the marinaros, as a thank you for things they do for him through the year. It was a superb treat for us too. The meat was delicious, very similar to the best quality lamb but with a subtly different flavour. All it needed to accompany it was some excellent fresh crusty bread and tomatoes.

Equinox is now tucked up in her cover to protect the deck from the sun. As the forecast is for no let up in the heat for a least the next week, and probably the next two months, we are happy with are decision that we head for milder shores for a while.

We are conveniently close to the fire boat, hopefully not needed.

Miles Today - 0

Miles 2022 – 1037

Tricia (and Steve)